by Te Radar
Prior to my visit to Mali, the closest I had come to adobe was the Photoshop program on my computer. I left the country a convert to its versatility.
It’s an overcast morning and I am waiting for Wolfgang to arrive. Once more his battered Volvo rattles into the paddock, his trailer laden with several buckets of mud. This isn’t any fancy mud, if such a thing exists. It is simply a mixture of ordinary clay, sand and water.
When I ask about the secret to combining the right amounts of each ingredient, he explains that in order to determine the correct amounts to produce your workable mud, simply blend a small amount of what you think is the right combination, roll it into a ball, and if it is dry by the next morning and isn’t falling apart, then you have it pretty right.
Despite my initial scepticism as to Wolfgang’s choice of locating the site for the oven directly under the totara tree, he has promised me that I will not burn the tree down. I certainly hope he is right. That would be embarrassing.
So, we begin.
Once again, the discarded concrete fence posts come in handy as we use a large stack of them to create a waist-high base, on top of which we rest four large concrete paving stones. This forms a sturdy surface to place a layer of ordinary clay bricks. You can use firebricks, but I haven’t managed to scrounge any of these.
The bricks are then cemented into place with a little of the mud. Using a 40-centimetre stick, we measure the radius of the circle we etch onto the base, noting where the centre is. The stick is then stood upright in the centre, and sand is piled around it to create a dome, as high as the radius is wide. Judicious use of water keeps the sand damp and in place.
Covering the sand with wet newspaper, I note that many of the pages are advertising real estate, mostly beachfront properties. How many of these overpriced retreats would have a mud oven? I wonder. It is immensely satisfying to bury these turgid pages of aspirational real estate porn under a heavy caking of mud slurry (to a depth of about 10 centimetres if you are reading this for instructions, and not pleasure).
On top of this goes a thick mixture of straw and mud. This needs to be of a consistency whereby the straw is just held in place by the mud. This 10–15-centimetre layer creates the key to the stove, a thick thermodynamic layer designed to contain small air pockets that will be heated, and which will retain this heat for a long period of time.
Another 10-centimetre layer of the original slurry covers this, which we smooth off, and then all that is left to do is to create the door by cutting some of the mud out of the wall. The height of the door is one of the most crucial elements in the process. It should be about 66 per cent of the height of the interior of the dome.
By the end of a pleasant morning, we are finished. Wishing me luck, Wolfgang repacks the Volvo with Teutonic efficiency and departs.
After allowing it to dry for a few days, I delicately remove the sand mould from the interior, fearful that the mud inside will collapse and I will then have to start all over again.
Try as I might, I cannot get the fire to catch in the centre of the oven. I light a little kindling in the gaping maw of the oven, get it burning and push it delicately inside, where it immediately dies down, splutters a little smoke, and dies.
Clearly it lacks oxygen, so I carefully shave the top of the door off until it allows enough air in to keep the fire going.
The great thing about working with mud is that if you remove too much, you just need to splatter a little more on. I enjoy working with steel for the same reason. You can often fix it with a little judicious welding.
After a few days of lighting increasingly larger fires, it is time to cook something.
Heating the oven is straightforward: light a fire inside, keep it burning at a fair clip for a few hours, then scrape out any coals or embers, and insert food.
Wolfgang has warned me that the first time anyone ever tries to cook something in one of these ovens, they invariably burn it. I can see why. The heat inside the oven is phenomenal. I insert my oven thermometer into its furnace-like interior and take a reading. The result? One melted thermometer.
In light of this, I christen my mound of mud The Kiln.
Before I sacrifice one of the roosters to its fiery depths, I experiment with a goat casserole. Into my cast-iron camp oven go a little haunch of goat, some new potatoes, carrots, a handful of herbs, and a generous dollop of red wine. The camp oven goes into the kiln, and the entrance is sealed.
Some people fashion might little doors for their oven to trap the heat in, but I prefer to use a series of bricks. They are heavy, get quite hot, and never seem to fit together the same way twice, but sealing up the hole with the cumbersome bricks gives me a sense of satisfaction.
Within seven short minutes, the camp oven appears to be glowing faintly white, so I think it prudent to withdraw it and inspect the contents. The wine has all but disappeared, and the meal appears cooked.
Crikey.
While it could have done with a longer, slower cooking, it is delicious. Discounting the hours needed to heat it with fire, the kiln appears to be able to cook food faster than a microwave.
It is clear I will have to learn the subtleties of the beast, but I am rapt. I have cooked a meal in mud. How sustainable of little old me.
Over the following months, come rain or shine, the kiln sits nestled squatly under the protective canopy of the tree, and from the blistering heat of its interior emerges all manner of bread, pies, pizzas, roasts, baked goods and casseroles.
And now it is time to test it on a roast chicken.
After I slide the body of the bird into its depths, along with some compost-sprouted potatoes I have transformed into spicy wedges, I have time to relax and contemplate the process.
When you take into account the length of time and unpleasant nature of killing, plucking and gutting the chicken, and adding in the cost of its feed, and the need to have someone feed them should you be away, you have to wonder why it is worth it, when they can be bought from the supermarket for as little as $7.
Even paying the premium for free range, or organic chickens, it’s still cheaper than growing and killing your own.
My chicken may not be as plump or tender as a store-bought one, but it tastes like no chicken you will ever buy.
It just tastes chickenier.
As I pull a drumstick off the cooked bird, I know that this chicken has had a full and rich life doing all the things that chickens love to do, right up to the moment I severed its head.
Sitting under the totara tree, eating my glorified chicken and chips, I look up to see another rooster sitting contentedly on the fence, looking at me.
I wave a drumstick at him and keep eating.
25
Barry the lamb
Jane has entered me in a show. Well, not me exactly. I shan’t be displayed in a cage, or leashed to a pole like some kind of carnival freak. Rather it has been decided that I am to enter some of my produce in the produce-growing competition that forms a part of the great spectacle and wholesome family fun day that is the annual Helensville A&P Show.
Oh dear.
That the good folk of Helensville and the surrounding areas will see my produce is a more fearful prospect than the somewhat more distant certainty that vastly more people will witness my inability to grow much of anything when the show is televised.
My immediate concern isn’t that I will be competing against people who have been entering the competition for years, and who have honed their competitive garden skills to a fine art. I’m more concerned that there is a very real probability that the competition may force me to go hungry, as I’m unsure whether I will be able to have my vegetables returned after the event. It would be a great shame to have to enter the best of what little I have grown and then be precluded from eating it.
Still, I do have to confess to being a little excited at the prospect of seeing how my produce will shape up.
I have never really won a prize before. I was the top horticulture student i
n the third form at school, but given that two per cent of that exam was awarded simply for writing your name on the paper, and that some people managed to get this wrong, it is little surprise I topped the school.
As the competition is organised along lines of ruthless efficiency, I have to declare some time in advance the vegetables I am going to enter.
‘I shall enter all of the categories!’ I proclaim to Jane.
She looks at me with the look of sad derision I have come to know and fear, and informs me that not only have I not planted half the categories, but of those that remain there is the real likelihood that many won’t survive until the day of the show.
‘Oh. Well then. Umm, what can I enter?’
The entry form that is eventually submitted declares that I, Te Radar, will be throwing into the ring a watermelon, some parsley, potatoes, beans, peppers, corn and eggs, even though I guess the real credit for the latter’s success will ultimately have to go to the chickens.
With each passing sleep, the show day draws closer, and I try to plump up my vegetables by adding extra cow manure slurry, and watering them with both worm and man tea as often as I can remember to. I’m not sure it is doing much good, or whether it is possible to overfeed them, but at least they are not dying.
Of more concern is that I have to take the caravan to the showgrounds so that I can stay overnight. If there is anything that will make the Land Rover even more unwieldy, it’s the addition of a caravan that has the aerodynamic properties of a large concrete slab.
I am right to be worried, for as the moment for departure arrives, the weather proves to be quite dynamic. An approaching storm is being heralded by a blustery wind that is buffeting both the Land Rover and the caravan to such an extent that I am worried they will be upended.
But the A&P show waits for no person. I have produce to enter, and I can’t wait for a lull in the storm.
Shouting a cursory ‘Wish me luck!’ to the cows, I wave them a cheery goodbye, and with a graunching of gears lumber off up the driveway, trailing a thick plume of diesel smoke.
Somehow, despite being very nearly blown off the road on several occasions as the caravan, caught by gusts of wind, fishtails behind me with all the grace of a drunken sailor returning from a rather celebratory bout of shore leave, I arrive safely at the A&P showgrounds.
I select a site in the car park near where a few other house-buses are parked, and as a light drizzle dampens the soil I’m feeling a little smug, for while others will have to get up tomorrow and struggle through the wind and rain to get to the show, I’m already comfortably in residence.
With not a moment to lose, I rush the box containing the cream of my meagre crop to the table accepting the produce entries, pay the entry fee, and return to the caravan for a much-needed nap.
Near midnight there’s a knock on the window, and I pull the curtain back to reveal the wide-eyed faces of several teenage girls. They are the same troop of feisty young Scouts who came to the farm to make damper with me, and I am reminded that I still haven’t embroidered them any achievement badges.
They are the reason I’m in residence at the grounds, as I have been conscripted to assist them in patrolling the site. I had been worried about what would happen should we discover any untowardness, but as the troop appears to be fuelled by sugar and the critical mass of their own unbridled adolescence, I no longer fear encountering a miscreant.
Rather, I fear for the miscreant who might be unlucky enough to encounter us.
These femmes could prove fatal.
As we traipse around the site, I conclude that the chances of encountering any scoundrels are slim, given the shrill laughter and girlish squeals emanating not only from me, but also from the girls themselves. I insist we check the food caravans, as I would be inconsolable if my long-awaited battered hotdog didn’t eventuate the following day because some burglar had pilfered it in the night.
After roaming through the showgrounds for some time, shining torches at quad bikes and gazebos and tractors and fences and stables while engaging in various high jinks, I am wilting under the onslaught of the Scouts’ gusto. Thankfully, our tour of duty ends, and we return from the night like grizzled veterans to the building they have commandeered as their bedchamber.
As they clamber into their sleeping bags, I bid them a hearty goodnight, and accept the offer of a refreshingly wholesome cup of Milo and a biscuit in the adjoining room with the bearded Scout leader (who is a man, as it happens). He informs me that the show patrols originally started 20 years ago after the audacious theft of a marquee, but that they have never actually encountered any problems since.
After having experienced the diligence and fearsomeness of these young women, I am not surprised.
As the long-awaited rain begins to fall in great torrents from the night sky, I retire for the evening.
The irony. After a long drought, the rain has decided to come on the very day it isn’t really wanted. A great deal of money is tied up in the event, and the showgrounds have a reputation for becoming very muddy underfoot, meaning punters will not want to venture out in the atrocious weather.
Listening to its moist goodness pounding onto the roof of the caravan, I lie awake in eager anticipation of the day ahead. As a child I was never a big attendee of A&P shows, nor Easter shows, or gymkhanas for that matter, and I am keen to make up for lost time, and to literally experience all the fun of the fair.
At dawn I fling open the caravan’s door to be greeted by a lacklustre, damply grey morning, and a fairground that isn’t exactly shrieking ‘Fun to be had here!’
The one bright light on the horizon is provided by the sight of a passing woman who has clearly not really thought about where she is venturing that day, and whose high heels are proving less than ideal footwear for the rain-sodden ground.
As she attempts to unstick one from the puggy earth into which it has impaled itself, her other heel sinks in deeper, until she is literally nailed to the ground. She looks at me in confusion, clearly unable to comprehend the situation. All I can do is smile back and offer a cheery ‘Good day for it!’
It isn’t though.
It is reassuring to think that if the worst happens and fleets of cars are to become stuck in the parking paddock, then as it is a showcase of all things rural, there will be no shortage of tractors to haul them out.
What there is, though, is a shortage of people.
The people who have come wear warm jackets and worried smiles. It is bucketing down, and the forecast is for continuing rain, but rural folk are made of sterner stuff, and many continue on oblivious to the rain.
I’m drawn to the Calf Club regional final that is being held in the drizzle. Calf Club, for those of you unfamiliar with the concept, is a quaint rural phenomenon where parents allow their children to rear a baby animal of the ungulate variety (calves, lambs, or a goat). The children are supposed to spend several weeks teaching the animal to obey simple oral commands, and mastering the art of leading said animal around a hessian-lined show ring on a piece of string. The children who do this the best win a ribbon.
If nothing else, it proves the old adage that you make your own fun in the country.
As a child, despite growing up on a dairy farm, I was never allowed to rear a calf. Mother was a firm believer that it was the other mothers, and the occasional father, who did much of the pre-show grooming, and she was far too busy to be tied down to this commitment.
She did, however, allow us to borrow lambs from the Wiggins family. Oh, how my siblings and I would rejoice in the rapidly wriggling tails of our lambs as they guzzled from their bottles of milk—at least before the rubber ring claimed the tails.
I was clearly not very adept at training them though, as I never seemed to win anything but the charming smile of my lamb as we frolicked in the spring sunshine.
Once Calf Club day was over, the lambs were returned to the Wiggins, where no doubt they lived a full and satisfying life, dying eventually of old age i
n their sleep.
One year, things were different. I had a lamb that seemed to be no ordinary lamb. I called him Barry.
Although a little on the puny side, which only served to endear him to me even more, Barry proved to be fairly adept at obeying oral commands and walking around in rectangles. For the first time I was quietly confident of securing a ribbon and the acclamation of my peers.
On the afternoon before the big day, I scampered home for a final flurry of rectangle walking and grooming, but Barry, who normally came gambolling out to meet me, was nowhere to be seen.
‘Barry,’ I yelled. ‘Baz!’
Nothing. There was only a yawning emptiness in his pen.
Then, from the corner of my eye, I saw my mother coming from the house with a strange expression on her face.
‘Andrew,’ she said to me, because that’s my name, ‘I’m afraid I have some rather bad news for you. You see, little Barry was very sick, and I’m afraid that this afternoon he passed away.’
‘Oh,’ I said. ‘That’s inconvenient.’
Never again would I lead another lamb.
Eventually, after a few years of suffering the humiliation of having to enter the handicrafts competition with my sand saucers and aqua jars, I did re-enter the show ring, but this time with a baby goat. I amazed myself at managing to secure a ribbon for placing third, although there were only two other children who entered goats that year.
It wasn’t what could be called an illustrious history in Calf Clubbing, and I thought that the trauma of it was something I had bundled up into a tight ball of guilt and rage, which was wrapped in a thin skin of abandonment issues, and then swaddled in a lifetime of underachievement, and sealed behind a closed door in the back of my mind.
I was mistaken.